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Why We’re Here

Huge thanks to everyone who pledged the last few days, helping push The Brooklyn Wars past the $4,700 mark! With four days and a few hours left to go, all I need is another $1,270 to make this book a reality — well, that and me spending the next few months actually writing it, but, you know, details.

And speaking of details, my last update about how Brooklyn rents continue to rise despite increasing poverty sparked a long conversation with an economist friend on the big question this raises: Why on earth do so many people still choose to live here, when the cost of living in Pittsburgh or Portland or Pensacola is so much more affordable? We came up with a bunch of possible explanations, none of them entirely satisfying, and finally set the entire subject aside as “in need of more research.”

So, as a first bit of research, I’ve started an online survey asking current and former Brooklynites two questions: What brought you here, and what made you decide to stay or leave? Please spread this link (http://bit.ly/whybrooklyn) as far and wide as possible — I know that self-selecting web surveys are bound to be unscientific and anecdotal, but at least it should provide some clues for my further investigations.

Thanks again for your generosity, and for all your help in spreading the word about this project. Just a few more big pledges (I’ve made available some additional t-shirts, since those were proving so popular) or a moderate flurry of smaller ones, and we’ll be over the top. You’ve already done plenty to help, but if you can think of anything else — even just forwarding this message to a couple of friends who may not have heard about The Brooklyn Wars — it will be appreciated more than you can know.

“A great read, impeccably researched. This is essential reading for anybody who witnessed the mind-blowing transformation of Brooklyn over the past 20 years and hungers to understand what actually happened.” —Kelly Anderson, director of My Brooklyn
“A teeth-gnashing account of how the Big Money boys teamed up with City Hall pols to grab everything from Coney Island’s Thunderbolt to once–working class neighborhoods of downtown Brooklyn in the name of progress.” —Tom Robbins, Investigative Journalist in Residence, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
“The Brooklyn Wars recovers the great Brooklyn virtue of telling it like it is. Neil deMause writes with the street-savvy common sense Brooklyn was known for before it became a ‘brand.’” —Paul Moses, author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians
“Expertly recounts the meteoric transition of New York’s most famous borough in true stories that read like gripping fiction.” —Amy Nicholson, director of Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride